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GEORGE°W BELLOWS 


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GEORGE 
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BELLOWS 


Teme elle Lig@ Geko Aa aies 


AANQLLHAH AIA AOA AA NH AHAAOD 


Alfred A Knopf 


Pa ee Copyright 1927, 
By Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 


ad 


Manufactured in the United States 
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I Wish to Thank 
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EMMA-:S-BELLOWS 


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CONTENTS 


CprmooR Gok WwW BELLO WS 9 
by Thomas Beer 


Perk) 17 U Gt Ov RaY N.O°Ut E 33 


by Eugene Speicher 


eet © CG R AvP Hey 35 
by Atherton Curtis 


re Re Cab iW “Deb ala le ©) Wes 39 


His Lithographs 1-195 


feNe DLE xX 235 
of the Lithographs 


GEORGE°-W-BELLOWS 


aR een me On ee [EN ARSE Oren LO 255 


N WEEKDAYS HE HAD NOTHING WORSE TO 
face than the perils of school and sanitation; but on Sunday, 
the small, only son of Mr. George Bellows had to remember 
that he was a Methodist and the son of a Methodist. His 

solid father’s solid house enclosed him. If it was winter the shades were 
partly drawn and the heavy furniture glowed timidly in a reduced light. 
If it was summer, voices and the failing cadence of hoofs on paving came 
through slats of Venetian blinds that clicked and swayed when a fierce, 
saffron glow prophesied those purple thunderstorms that sweep across 
Ohio. The various, sinful world was all outside the residence of 
Mr. George Bellows in Columbus and nothing could dissolve this 
barrier between young George Wesley Bellows and the humanity be~ 
yond the windowsills. It was Sunday. He might read or draw. 

His handsome, hawk-nosed mother liked to read aloud and that left 
George free to draw. So panoramas cut in architect’s blue paper and 
scrawled with pencil were pinned on drawers of the hard, plain chests. 
He saw railroads, menageries, parades and battles while his mother’s 
voice drawled on. There were no sisters and brothers to share the game. 
His mother was middle-aged and his father almost old when he was born. 
He was to grow up in that uncommon atmosphere which nurtures a 


last child or an only child of aging folk, an undistracted tenderness and 


[9] 


SG GEORGE: W:BELLOWS Gk 


vigilance. George, killing Sunday afternoon with blue paper, pencils 
and scissors, was a good deal admired. The effect of this admiration was 
entirely healthy, too, because he began to admire himself. 

The outer world, of course, was not willing to help on this admira- 
tion any harder than it had to. A small boy who is sent to school immacu 
late and who, at school, is made to give little demonstrations of drawing 
in colored chalk to show the other children how these things are done — 
such a small boy finds trouble waiting at corners of fences on his way 
home. This first stage of criticism was not centred on the art but on the 
artist. ““It was,” he said later, “‘very good for my muscles.” Presently 
infantile and adolescent society began to admire George Bellows, but 
not as an artist. His germicidal aunt and mother mourned over frayed 
jerseys and battered trousers. “Ho” Bellows who fairly glittered on 
baseball and basketball teams of Ohio State University did not look 
always as the son of a respected Republican and Methodist archite& 
and builder should look. He had become hopelessly deficient in con 
servatism of dress. He sang; he had a passion for amateur theatricals; 
his reputation in basketball stretched well outside the state of Ohio; 
his nervous, clever sketches in his university’s magazine amused the 
undergraduates; he had become a social entity. But nothing promised 
that he would be a bishop, as his mother wanted him to be, and his 
father probably knew that the one son would not be a man of affairs. 

This family came from Yankee territory into Ohio. The elder 
George Bellows had followed rivers and canals westward in the restless 
period that destroyed the first society of New England. He belonged 


to the end of Long Island where whalemen reared symmetrical, firm 


[ 10 | 


Gee) HIS LITHOGRAPHS G&S 


cottages, as their brothers did on Nantucket. This population respected 
the craftsman, the “handy man,” who could carve ivory or wooden toys 
between whales on his ship and make a chair or a wall on shore. 
Mr. Bellows, when his sober taste in furniture was not suited in the 
Columbus shops, sent for hard woods and made chests or desks to 
please himself. He was unassailable on law, Methodism and the Re- 
publican party but he reverenced Michael Angelo as he did Moses. 
He dreaded a painter’s career for his son although finally he sent the 
tall boy to New York in 1904 with an allowance. It was not silly to 
want to be a painter, but it was dangerous. 

Another sensible American with a respect for art had seen what was 
happening to American painting in 1884. This was Eugene Schuyler, 
historian and diplomat, the friend of Tolstoy, Turgenievand Dostoy- 
evsky. “ Our new millionaires,’ he wrote, “have something in common 
with the wealthy Russians. They are not patrons of what 1s native or 
realistic in painting and sculpture but seem to wish an alliance with the 
past of other countries. As the cosmopolite Russian fills his house with 
paintings from Paris or Rome, so our Americans run around looking 
for antiques in which they have no real interest at all. . . . It will militate 
against the interest of the American painter in the long run. He must 
either imitate the taint of the museum or set out to become a kind of 
halfway French or English painter in order to gain his daily bread. . . .” 
These processes had, in fact, commenced. In the 80s 1t 1s discoverable 
that more than a few young Americans marvellously contrived to get 
as far into the museum as they could by softening their colors, deadening 


their drawing and doing everything that had already been done by 
[ere 


tees. | GG E-OOR.G ES WB Ete Oia oro 


Flandrin, Leighton, Watts and Millais. This resulted in some amiably 
painted illustrations from mythology and medizval history, and the 
curious movement culminated when Edwin Abbey executed his panels 
of the search for the Holy Grail in the public library of Boston. Nobody 
powerful demanded what this legend had to do with the culture of 
Massachusetts; the tedious pictures were reported handsomely by literary 
men, and even Henry James professed to admire them. This “alliance 
with the past of other countries” had become corredt. Winslow Homer, 
Albert Ryder and Thomas Eakins, in 1900, were almost nobodies in 
literary discussions of painting. The American scene had been defeated, 
so to speak, by the European legend. Even Yankee woods and meadows 
were represented with French mists or afterglows from Barbizon. It 
may have been that the elder George Bellows wondered how his non 
conforming son would get along in this strange, unreal profession 
because he knew his son’s temperament. The revolt of some realists and 
satirists — Henri, Glackens, Sloan, Luks and more — was not much 
known in Columbus in 1903. But it was in 1903 that Miss Katherine 
Hiller, sitting on a cousin’s veranda in the flat city, found herself quar- 
relling with a tall, untidy, well looking boy who said that he hated all 
these Holy Grails and landscapes and junk. It was already a rebellious 
intelligence that came for lessons to Robert Henri in 1904. 

The young man, idling in front of “ The N ativity’’ in the Metro- 
politan Museum, arrested by El Greco's attenuations and whirling 
gestures or poring over folios that held prints from Velasquez, Daumier, 
Goya and Tintoretto, was also mad for music. His allowance did not 


cover tickets for symphony concerts, operas and theaters. He had, too, 


[12] 


Ge@5 HIS LITHOGRAPHS) GR 


an unquestionable liking for food. In 1905 he discovered that a fine 
basketball player or a good baseball player was worth a few dollars 
on Saturday and Sunday to athletic clubs in the suburbs. He made an 
inelegant decision in favor of professional sports instead of devilling his 
father for a larger allowance. A foothold or the wish for a foothold on 
superior society would have kept Bellows from paying for his seat at 
the symphony or in the gallery of the opera by any such means. But he 
was hopelessly immune to smartness, as socially evinced, and all his 
prevailing tastes were very simple. He responded to sunlight, games, 
good food and amusing talk. The endlessly decorating, if never decora- 
tive, layer of New York’s inhabitants never meant much to him. He 
saw its component parts from the gallery of the opera or stared over their 
heads — he was seventy-four inches long — on Fifth Avenue. An ele- 
vation of mind that was not merely physical kept him from caring 
whether his evening coat fitted or not. He had not even developed, when 
he began to exhibit paintings, the minor social arts of the esthetician. 
Mr. Eugene Speicher, another athlete artist, saw a tall man very expert 
at basketball in the gymnasium of a Y.M.C.A. and was presented to 
a Mr. Bellows. Mr. Speicher was thrilled. Was this “Ho” Bellows of 
Ohio State team? Mr. Bellows had heard of a “Spike” who had a 
renown in Buffalo. Was this Spike: The young men went off to dine 
together and to talk sports. Mr. Speicher found himself entering a 
Studio presently and discovered rather casually that his acquaintance 
was a painter. Mr. Bellows, ready to walk under the burning shower 
bath of notoriety, was an unaffected person, blunt in a kindly way, and 


not much given to talking about painting, outside of his professional set. 


[eae 


Gk) GEORGE:*W:-BELLOWS Gr) 


His one striking trick was a wide gesticulation of the right arm that, 
when I once saw him, seemed the motion of a pitcher tossing a ball 
carelessly. 

After a time there was a city painted by George Bellows. The me- 
tropolis had swallowed up a critic who showed no interest in its suavities 
or occasions of grace. The New York of the younger George Bellows is 
a city of slums in which dogs quarrel over a garbage can or children, 
completely mannerless, patronize a melon-seller on the curb of a cheap 
block. He journalizes; he attempts anything that catches his widely 
opened grey eyes. He shows you admirably a stout tugboat, a collection 
of angles and lines, breasting the East River, and an austere sentiment 
expends itself on a forlorn tenement rearing against the sweep of a 
bridge that dwarfs it. He paints a street steaming in summer or relieves 
the heat by idling up the pent Harlem to paint a swarm of naked boys 
as a web of pink or brown flesh on a sunny pier. He tries to capture the 
rush of a bridge into the night above Brooklyn and is almost defeated 
by the difficult lights. He succeeds with a slope of park soaking in a grey 
rain that dims the Hudson and makes causeways melancholy bands of 
eritty color. In 1911 he assaulted a whole mile of the city in one attack. 
“New York” brought out a kind of indignant squeal from reviewers 
and an epigram from the celebrated John Quinn who was told that 
Bellows had thrown New York on canvas and, standing before the 
picture, said, “Yes, he has thrown New York on canvas but he need 
not have thrown an extra half pound of paint after it.... My God, 
though, there’s a real policeman in there!’ And, sure enough, there 1s 


a real policeman among the trucks and hurrying people,a tiny blue 


[14] 


Gk HIS LITHOGRAPHS Qe 


pompousness that waves white gloves at the traffic, dominating his plane 
below skyscrapers hideous with advertisements in a cold air. This 
official, seen satirically, 1s still real as the excited sponges that are men’s 
eross faces rimming the prize ring in “ Sharkey’s”’ and “‘ Both Members 
Ste pors.Club.’ 

He had learned to revere Velasquez, Rembrandt, Goya, Titian, 
Tintoretto, Manet, Renoir, Daumier, El Greco and Franz Hals. He 
preferred Homer and Eakins among the Americans. But his admira/ 
tions among the Englishmen seem to have been limited to Constable and 
the satirists, Leech and Keane. In this list it 1s apparent that painters of 
movement and fantastics have a considerable place. El Greco’s gesture 
attracts him. He is enamored of shadows and eccentric lights. “ The 
Circus,” “Polo Game” and the first four prize-fight scenes are experi- 
ments in light and movement. His satire instantly embraces the whole 
body of his subject. A young oaf comes craning clean through the ropes 
to gape at the beaten manof “A Knock-out”’ and the Goyesque wenches 
of “I Want You Two Girls To Know Each Other” are vulgar down 
even to their feet. These beings are completed. He relies not on the face 
of his victim, but on a rendition of an entire movement or bulk. His prize 
fighters have— intentionally — bodies but no particular faces. Their move- 
ment is the essential. “I do not care,”’ he wrote to Miss Hiller in 1910, 
“about the expression of a prize fighter’s mug. A prize fighter’s muscles 
are his e pluribus unum. The expression of his face is about as unimpor- 
tant as the polish on a locomotive’s headlight. . . . 1am not interested in 
the morality of prize fighting. But let me say that the atmosphere around 


the fighters is a lot more immoral than the fighters themselves. . .. lam 


Lense] 


esi GEO Re gE mW lee Dee eee i) 


against artificial subject in modern painting. Prize fighters and swimmers 
are the only types whose muscular aétion can be painted in the nude 
legitimately... . 1 am sorry | have shocked you but very much flattered 
that you remembered me. Was it the size of my ears?” 

His sentiment for beauty, in this first period, is more likely to pass out 
in the minor drama of the tug battling under Blackwell’s Island Bridge 
or in “The Lone Tenement.” Being in love with a handsome Miss 
Emma Story of Upper Montclair, New Jersey, he became somewhat 
sentimental and showed it in a painting executed while he was teaching 
for some months at the University of Virginia, but his lawn and his 
languid gentlewomen do not succeed too well. He had a suspicion of 
mere prettiness lodged somewhere in his brain. The more visible failures 
of his first Stage lie precisely where many cood painters first succeed, in 
the suggestion of a fine sumptuousness and grace. His grace is energy, 
restless Hesh, restless water, restless light. He can be many things but 
seldom tranquil. 

In 1908 he was made a member of the National Academy of Design. 
In 1909 journalism caught up his prize-fight scenes and much was heard 
about the “brutal” George Bellows. It now appears ludicrous that a 
painter should have been so blackguarded for showing a prize fight, but 
the peculiarly American trick of denying art its fair freedom of subject 1s 
always likely to endanger an experimental painter. In 1910 he revolted 
along with his mentor, Mr. Henri, against the judgment of the Academy 
and exhibited with an independent group. In 1910 he also married 
Miss Story and added the excitements of attempting to support a wife 


to his other hazardous performances. 


[ 16 ] 


Ge@5 HIS LITHOGRAPHS Gk 


The life of painters in the United States is represented in our modern 
letters only by Thomas Craven’s short novel “Paint.” They balance 
along on the fine line between commerce, in the way of committing 
advertisements or some other form of technical drudgery, and the supreme 
chance of actually selling a painting. Bellows had excited much furious 
discussion. He had, in fact, increased all the offences of John Sloan, 
Robert Henri and George Luks. The mention of his name seemed to 
throw conservatives into a frothing epilepsy of denunciation, although 
this was directed against his work and not against the painter himself. 
His financial status, until the last years of his life, was artistically vague 


> 


and his “popularity,” so much mentioned in obituaries, is mere 
pleasant myth. He might be called popular as Mr. Sherwood Anderson 
is popular on April 30, 1927; his work was discussed among people 
who painted or who had some positive interest in painting. He belonged 
against the grain of the period; he had grasped at the raw material of 
the American scene and suffered — in matters of money — along with 
others. Even a symbolist, such as Arthur Davies, was not so rasping to 
conservatism as this positive satirist with his bravura, his cold versatility 
and untamed assertiveness. 

“You're a great painter,” said Mr. Thomas Fiske, watching him 
sketch a cow on the seashore 1n 1912. 

Bellows dug some of the state of Maine loose with a heel, flushed and 
drawled, “I'd like to be a great painter. How old are you? ” 

“Seventeen.” 

“T thought it was about that,”” said Bellows, and went on sketching. 


But after the spring of 1913 Bellows could experiment in asym- 


[azz | 


RM GEORGE:-W:BELLOWS es) 


metrical drawings, dally with problems of rigid line seen in angles 
against remote, lighted surfaces, or champion the dynamic symmetry 
of Jay Hambidge as much as he liked without getting the jeers formerly 
earned by all this. His own name appears in the list of a committee in 
charge of what was called “ the Armory show,” a prodigious exhibition 
opened in February, 1913. Worried gentlewomen and stockbrokers and 
shocked elderly amateurs could be found here daily staring at Rouault’s 
red nudes, at Brancusi’s Statues, at paintings by Braque, Matisse, 
Cézanne, Renoir, Marquet, Duchamp, Picabia, Picasso and men less 
notable. A venerable critic of painting, now dead, seized my arm before 
some gesture of Cubism and demanded whether Arthur Davies and 
Robert Henri could not be jailed for forwarding this stuff into public 
attention. He never forgave them — his special admiration was Mantegna 
__ until he died. The work of charlatans was advertised alongside that 
of honest men, perhaps, but the annunciation was explosive and some 
of the results were instantly comic. Overnight a home-grown crop of 
Picassos and Cézannes appeared; our American facility absorbed the 
surfaces of the new things and now we have goldenrod painted in the 
manner of Odilon Redon and Texan landscapes seen as Cézanne saw 
the vale behind Arles. It was suddenly explained that a painting in 
three dimensions was absurd. Manet, still a bit suspicious in America 
as late as 1912, was now hopelessly conservative. In the midst of this 
Bellows honestly continued to be George Bellows. 

He was honest and his bluntness became famous. It needed a cone 
siderable charm to cover advice he gave to younger painters in his 


thirties... . A boy showed him sketches for an advertising office, done 


[18 ] 


Get) HIS LITHOGRAPHS Gk 


in the most popular manner and for the sake of his debts, and said 
drearily, “ Well, Chardin painted street signs for a living, you know?” 
Bellows, staring at the drawings, drawled, “‘ Ye-es, but I bet Chardin 
painted good street signs. . . .” Another novice complained that a paint- 
ing of a very handsome naked girl had not been appreciated. Bellows 
sat looking at the luscious skin and the graceful pose on the canvas and 
then asked, “Did you ever look at one of Rembrandt’s nudes?” and as 
that insinuation did not work he asked, “Couldn’t you have got a 
prettier girl and made her a little better looking?” and, at that point, 
the novice knew that he'd been called vulgar. It happens that I saw 
the painter only once, but he was being blunt about something when 
I saw him. 

This occurred in a potato-colored cavern above Fifth Avenue, a 
gallery in which a tiresome Cubist and a rather commonplace English 
academician were being shown. I had come in to get out of a snow~ 
Storm and was idling around the place wondering if this meant anything 
when a voice out of central Ohio interested me in the next room. Two 
estheticians had pinned the tall, bald man into a corner and were ex 
plaining art to him, with one of the Cubist effects as an example. Their 
draperies were correct for the year 1922, when sad mufflers and colored 
handkerchiefs indicated the erudite and sensitive. They purred along 
and one of them used the word “disintegration” in his argument. 
Bellows whirled up an arm and his barytone voice boomed: “ All 
right! You say he’s disintegrated his effect: Well, what was the effect 
before he disintegrated it?’ The exsthetictans rallied, after a moment, 


and babbled something about “philosophies of suspension” or some 


[19] 


ime GEORGE-“W-+BEL LOW 3 Gr 


other cant of the season. Bellows genially said, “Oh, bosh! Dérain 
or Picasso know what they’re doing! This man doesn’t know a dog- 
gone thing! He’s a fake!” There was more babble and the fine 
voice boomed again, “ Want to see some better paintings than this 
Stuff: All right! Go over to the nearest art store and ask for some 
drawings — any old drawings — by Frederic Remington! ” The estheti- 
cians gave it up, just there, and Bellows walked past me from the 
dim cavern. 

I looked after him with an interest not related to his virtues and de- 
fects as a painter. In 1916 he took up lithography, against good advice, 
knowing that a decent market for etching had been established in the 
United States as lithography died out. Presently the editor of a monthly 
magazine was struck by the appearance in one mail of three stories 
all about the hypocrisy of offering prayers in a penitentiary. This meant 
that Bellows had published “Benediction in Georgia.” There was a 
curious reversal of the usual process. A draughtsman was supplying 
literature with anecdotes. His pungent criticism of evangelism “The 
Sawdust Trail,” sent out another echo into journalism and fiction. He 
affirmed powerfully the literary satire which began to appear 1n America 
after the war and he affirmed it before it existed. ‘‘ Business-men’s 
Class, Y.M.C.A.” is the first consideration of the animal since called 
Babbitt in his fatuousness and his pathos. “ Prayer-meeting”’ is a study 
in the egoism of the religious dated 1916. His emotional indignation 
with the German armies in Belgium is no more just, perhaps, than 
Honoré Daumier’s rage against Louis Philippe and this attack of anger 
sent him back, as it had sent Manet before him, to effects of Goya. A man 


[20 ] 


ete) HIS LITHOGRAPHS Gh 


ina fine state of anger never can fully exercise his imagination.’ But he is 
coolly master of himself in his satires on the native scene and I doubt, in 
1927, that our written satire has surpassed “Legs of the Sea,” “‘ Busi- 
ness‘men’s Bath” or “Billy Sunday.” A weak and muddled business, 
“ Initiation in the Frat,” has had the odd result of stopping this stupid form 
ofsadism outright in one American college. All art is not quite useless. 

He drew generally without models and with an amazing ease. At 
Carmel, in 1917, he sat turning the face of a minor, affected poet into the 
face of a querulous old lady, altering the strokes of each drawing so that 
four tiny sketches strung across a bit of brown paper on his host’s desk 
complete a study in anatomy. His prize-fight scenes and much else are 
from memory or from imagination. He had a mimetic gift and some- 
times was his own model, whirling from the lithographer’s stone or the 
canvas to gesticulate before a mirror and capture the line of a pose. But 
his own facility, he came to know, was something of a dangerous toy. 
One of his last letters is a kind of comment on his work worth printing, 
just here. A young man sent him two sketches in 1924 and asked his 
judgment: “ The one I have marked,” the painter answers, “ shows that 
you have talent and will get somewhere. The other one shows that you 
know how to draw too easily. Put it away and look at it in a couple of 
years. You may not like it very well.... You kindly mention eight 


paintings of mine which you admire. I wonder if you will be surprised to 


1 Bellows was intensely fond of children and old people. The legends of the German 
invasion upset him on these two scores. A good many painters, able to visualize the “‘atro- 
cities’’ more completely than most men, suffered from a kind of indwelling excitement 
during the war that disturbed them to a point not yet admitted in print. Bellows, in 1924, 
referred to his war paintings as “‘hallucinations’’ but I do not suggest that he was ashamed 


[21] 


of them. 


me CEORGE: WW Bibb Oy. ee) 


hear that only three of these satisfy me today. I am still satisfied with ‘Both 
Members of This Club,’ ‘The Bridge, Blackwell’s Island’ and the 
portrait of my father. They represent all I could put into them at the time 
they were painted. I am not ashamed of the others because they really 
interested me when I was doing them, but that interest has not lasted. 
You must take care to distinguish between what immediately interests 
you and what sets your imagination to work. It is pretty hard to make a 
distin@tion between fancy and imagination, but the sooner you learn to 
make that distinction the better it will be for you. . . . Something in your 
work suggests that you are not very well. Take care of yourself; Good 
health is essential to good work. . . .” This something suggestive of ill 
health had been correélly seen; the painter's letter was opened by the young 
man’s mother on the day after his funeral. 

George Bellows, the celebrity, 1s the man who retorted, when the 
dogmatic Joseph Pennell said that he should not have painted Edith 
Cavell on her way to execution as he had not been there. “It is true that 
I was not present at Miss Cavell’s execution but I’ve never heard that 
Leonardo Da Vinci had a ticket of admission to the Last Supper, 
either!’ He is also the gay performer in amateur theatricals, such as 
“The Prune Hater’s Daughter,” and the insistent champion of native 
American painting. But behind this public character there was a sensi- 
tive and increasingly critical man who sometimes speculated outside 
his own field. A young writer who called on him at Woodstock in 1921 
was suddenly told that the White Whale in Herman Melville’s “ Moby 
Dick” was an emblem of the unconquerable ideal pursued by artists. 


The caller objected that Captain Ahab in the romance is chasing a real 


[22] 


wee Hal Sele HH © G@ ROA Ra S) theses 


whale. Bellows snorted, “ Look here! Don’t tell me that old Melville 
wasted all that imagination on a lot of darn blubber! ” Now that literary 
criticism has taken up the White Whale, the painter’s interpretation has 
its interest. He also preceded official criticism in suggesting that Brancusi’s 
statues would be better understood if they were simply labelled studies in 
texture and volume. He complained once that American literature had 
no epics except “ Moby Dick,” “Huckleberry Finn” and “The Red 
Badge of Courage.” As satire began to play with the middle west he 
was amused, but not too impressed. “These writers,” he said, “are 
charging up vices to the middle west that are pretty well known all over 
the world.” In 1923 a friend took exception to a notion of mine, not 
particularly original, that spectators of football and baseball are really 
enthralled by watching forms of ballet and this was reported to Bellows 
as an eccentricity. “But that’s obvious,” said the painter; “go and 
watch a basketball game without thinking that it is a game. Lots of 
games are dances.” Moving pictures bored him on the grounds that they 
were not pictures at all; their settings and rehearsing, he said, showed 
that the manufacturers had no sense of rhythm or design. Here, too, he 
was preceding the official complaints now current, as this remark was 
made in 1920 to Mr. Humphrey Parsons.’ The Freudian psychology 
interested him mildly and he suggested that it was being applied too 
exclusively to the analysis of books, and that the “ Proverbios” of Goya 


might be profitably Studied as conscious or unconscious expressions. 


1 Mr. Parsons, a brilliant person now dead, was accidentally introduced to Bellows at 
the Petitpas restaurant and did not know who he was, as he had not caught the paintet’s 
name. Having discussed the epic novel, the moving picture and American criticism, including 
some current essay on Whitman that had bored Bellows, Mr. Parsons decided that this was 
a poet or novelist. When Bellows left him, he was enlightened by a waiter. 


[23 | 


ers) 1G E O'R GE We B Bie Lb OW Saar 


The Australian amateur, Blamire Young, presently issued his psycho- 
analysis of the “ Proverbios,” but Bellows had already vanished. 

He remained, though, exclusively a painter and draughtsman. His 
interest in sculpture and the handicrafts was not large. When he was 
taxed with being interested in an art and not in art, he grinned and 
shrugged. But he exemplified the ancient and wholesome definition of 
an artist as a craftsman. When he wanted a supporting table for his 
lithographer’s stone, he simply made it himself. He even invented a 
machine for extracting the last ounce of paint from tubes and was te- 
buked by the strong fingers of Eugene Speicher who took up an emptied 
tube and got out more paint still after the machine had done its best. 
Also he remained exclusively an artist in the sense of being immune to 
the desire of objeéts. His house in East Nineteenth Street was simple in 
all its furnishings. The oStentations of the Californian coast annoyed 
him in 1917. His mind rejected the sterile prettiness of decoration. He 
looked at a prodigal villa near Carmel and exploded: * What pleasure 
is there in living in the middle of a thousand tons of concrete and marble: 
That’s as bad as Newport!” In this same spirit he refused orders to 
paint portraits and to illustrate books which had no interest for him and, 
gracefully, avoided fashionable dinnerparties. His answer when an edi- 
tor proposed to advertise him, at a cost, is a small masterpiece of veiled 
objurgation. He was many things, but he was never a profiteer 1n art. 

His friends have not invited me to flatter Bellows and, in judgment 
of paintings, I am haunted by a Story told to me of the last days of Honoré 
Daumier. Charles Audibert, a young man of fashion, went down to be 


presented to the blind genius in the cottage given him by a committee of 


[24 ] 


G’@ HIS LITHOGRAPHS) GR 


his adorers. Monsieur Audibert made his civil speeches and then recited 
a compliment on the painter given out by Ernest Renan. Daumier 
yawned. “All that is worthless,” he said; “nothing valuable can be 
said about me for twenty-five years. It would interest me if you could 
bring me news, monsieur, of what they will be saying in 1905!” And 
it is a little amusing to remember, here, that in 1904 and 1905 criticism 
again began to make values for Honoré Daumier. 

But, unimportantly, it occurs to me that the printed criticism of 
George Bellows has been too busy with his first effects, with the bravura 
and painted journalism of his youth. About 1920 this man’s paintings 
began to give some of us a new sensation, the suggestion of a firmer 
imagination and maturity. Perhaps the emotional heave of his war- 
paintings had exhausted something of his restlessness, or perhaps study— 
the discipline of conforming partly to the deliberate geometrical mensura- 
tion preached by Jay Hambidge and his growing admiration of Renoir— 
had done things to his temperament. He had himself come to see the 
difference between fancy and imagination. He had been constantly 
driven away from published criticism to the advice of his friends, to 
Robert Henri, John Sloan, and Eugene Speicher. The resulting steadi- 
ness, wherever it came from, mounts through the portrait of his daughter 
Anne and the view of Gramercy Park, with its laced shadows and 
romping children, in 1920. “ Elinor, Jean and Anna” of the same year, 
is a passage of gentle chamber music that swells out from the worn, solid 
hands of his mother and aunt, sitting in the dignity of age on either side 
of his small impatient child. His former scorn of mere landscape as a 


kind of “ painter’s exercise” vanishes in “ The White Horse,” of which 


[25 ] 


Gees G BOR GE WBE Oo Wes ce 


a notable French amateur remarks, “It is the most purely American 
painting since Homer.” In 1923 he painted “Introducing John L. 
Sullivan” and showed that his mind was now turning outward from 
the passion of the prize-fight to a satiric speculation on this atmosphere. 
A wave passes through the important nobody who bawls the old cham- 
pion’s name to the crowd and Sullivan himself is more than a good 
portrait; he is vanity manifest. Perhaps “ Emma and her Children” of 
this same year marks his fullest acquirements in the portrait. I discard 
“The Crucifixion ” although three of its figures have echoed themselves 
into the work of able painters since 1923 and the system on which he 
built his studies of movement is perhaps plainest here. There 1s a remi/ 
niscence of an Ohio thunderstorm’s approach in the sky above the 
bathing boys in “* River-front, No. 2,” and that “ No. 2” in the picture's 
title reports that his second thoughts were now very important to George 
Bellows. He still daringly experiments, as Thomas Benton does nowa- 
days, in the interpenetration of lines and figures. He chooses the most diffi 
cult and least “ paintable” moment of a body’s fall in the descent of 
Jack Dempsey through the ropes in “ Dempsey and Firpo.” The lighting 
of the ring in “ Ringside Seats” would have interested Seurat by its pre- 
cisions, and the shape of the seated prize-fighter makes a wistful comment 
on this entertainment. . .. A deep sentiment for time and character glows 
in his portrait of his mother and in the rigid, repressed faces of an old 
couple near Woodstock. His color, in this last period, begins to chant 
from the canvas. “ The Picnic,” “Jean, Anne and Joseph” and “ The 
Picket Fence” of 1924 show a rising scale of tints and an even finer 


brushwork than in his work of 1923. His landscapes stretch off into that 


[26] 


See HIS LITHOGRAPHS — GR) 


hinted infinity, the idea beyond ideas, where good painters dream them- 
selves. He has expanded all his means since “Both Members of this 
Club” and “ The Lone Tenement,” and one knows that he was going 
farther still. 

At the end of December, 1924, Mr. Thomas Fiske encountered 
Bellows, escorted by Miss Jean Bellows, on a corner of Nineteenth 
Street. Bellows obviously did not remember his admirer at all, but he 
Stood looking at Mr. Fiske’s bright red hair and probably, as he chatted 
about Marsden Hartley, Charles Burchfield and an etching of John 
Sloan, he began to recall the young man. Jean got tired of listening to this 
srownup conversation and presently towed the tall man away by one 
thumb. Mr. Fiske had turned, too, and was walking westward when 
Bellows called back, “Hi, you! ... I'd still like to be a great painter!” 

Few people saw him after that, his family, some friends, the surgeon 
and nurses of a hasty operation for appendicitis. On January 8th, 1925, 
it was known that there would be no more paintings by George Bellows. 

Next autumn he was Alattered by a memorial exhibition in the Metro- 
politan Museum. On the last day of this show there was a distinguished 
audience fluétuating along the lined paintings, sketches and lithographs. 
We were very mundane in that crowd, jostling women in fresh furs 
and gowns and glorified by representatives of a class that, in America, 
has leisure to do everything but think. Frank Crowninshield walked 
patiently from painting to painting explaining all this to some worldlings. 
Robert Henri, Marie Sterner, John Sloan and the other friends who had 
relentlessly advertised George Bellows and advised him were still with 


his essence. Every beautiful woman in black was being exhibited by 


[27 ] 


OMS GEORGE:W:BELLOWS &x% 


strangers to each other as his widow. There were also critics and writers 
of fiction, cartoonists and a goddess of the cinema who was not aware 
that George Bellows was an American and left the gallery disappointed 
when she heard he’d been born not so far from her own town in Ohio. 
The metropolis, streaming down the room, showed itself the metropolis 
in its clothes and its self-sufficiency. A man had turned with courage and 
audacity on the materials of the American scene. He had projected into 
the tameness of native art a flare of pugnacity and had demanded free- 
dom of subject for the native painters. The metropolitans, filing past his 
monument, said whatever they said and went off to dine somewhere. 
At least one person in the warm press stood wondering uselessly if this 
compaét glitter on the walls was not more real than the Alesh drifting past 
it. But art 1s an illusion of man who believes that he can conquer 


both himself and time, and time ts final judge of that illusion’s merit. 


HERE are the lithographs of George Bellows. Nothing has been con/ 
veniently withdrawn as imperfect. This is the lot.... Inconsequent 
stranger who has picked up this old book in the year 1962, I address 
you from the grave. This may not be an art at all, in your times, but this 
is America, seen by an honest man who never left the American soil in 
his whole life. I sit here vouching for his honesty. Here we are! It is im- 
measurably unimportant whether you like us or not, but here we are, 
and here 1s the biography of George Bellows. Here, you see, 1s the young 


man confined to the back seat of his father’s carriage on the way to 


[28 ] 


G4) HIS LITHOGRAPHS Gk 


church on a hot Sunday in the year 1898, a little sulky and very gangling 
in his best clothes. These night scenes in Central Park are fruits of his 
curiosity about plebeian love. He went peering and poking along the 
paths with an embarrassed wife on his arm, wondering about these 
people. This is rural religion, lighted by oil lamps in a tiny meeting 
house on the shore of Maine. The faces have the vicious complacency of 
good people remembering that God sees them, on Sunday evenings. 
These “ Artists Judging Works of Art” are desperately authentic. 
This architecture of bodies is ‘‘ The Sawdust Trail,” an outpouring of 
the vulgar toward the roaring voice of the Reverend William Ashley 
Sunday. Over there is “Billy Sunday,” a rolling ball of muscles, one 
foot on his pulpit, yowling his degraded version of the poem of Jesus 
Christ at this multitude in his raw tabernacle. You have come back into 
the Strange American world of the twentieth century’s first quarter. This 
is “ Initiation in the Frat,” a merry pastime that, in the year of this litho- 
graph, allowed members of a fraternity in the midlands to tie a sensitive 
lad to a railroad track in the middle of a winter night. They were sorry 
when he was found insane next morning. This is ““ The Shower-bath” 
and it 1s real as poverty or hunger. The naked men are all Americans 
getting cleansed in a Turkish bath. This fantasy of lights and empty 
faces 1s a “Dance in a Madhouse” and, for months after it appeared, 
the artist was assaulted through the mails by silly people who thought 
it cruel to make a nightmare of the unreal world. A critic joined them 
in their odd maledidtions who has no prejudice against the “A La 
Mie” of Toulouse-Lautrec, a gloating consideration of a frayed harlot 
and her bully in a cheap café. This is called “ The Law Is Too Slow” 


[29 ] 


Sees GC EORGE:W:BELLOW S- Gh 
and shows you the singular fun of frying Negroes who had fallen under 


suspicion of misdemeanor. And this 1s an eletrocution, a mode of 
getting rid of social inconveniences, awkward but sanctioned by the 
habits of mankind. This “ Legs of the Sea”” shows you how Bellows 
saw the plebeians taking the sun on shores of Long Island and New 
Jersey, not very gracefully, but so honestly. This “ Artists’ Evening” 
is in a restaurant named Petitpas. Emma Bellows has wearied of an 
argument among the father of William Butler Yeats, Robert Henri and 
her husband and is looking at you. Mr. Henri, never wordy, is telling the 
old Irishman something and is not being believed. In “ My Family ” the 
artist is watching Jean Bellows over his wife’s shoulder. — Do you draw 
at allz Take a pencil and interest yourself in copying the baby’s figure 
and the amused movement of her face, or turn to the nude reclining on a 
pillow and try to imitate the sweeping, hard line that limits her body, or 
the clenched hand that rises out of the frenzy of small motions named 
“The Crowd” or the first row of convicts in “ Benediction in Georgia,” 
ot the back of the right-hand prize-fighter in the “Stag at Sharkey’s,” 
or the last sketch of Anne Bellows, lovely and so bored. These things 
make up the biography of George Bellows; this is his essence. It does not 
matter that he took medals, taught in Virginia and in Chicago, was a 
member of this, that and the other club and society. This is what he 
learned how to do. Try to copy it, and then think a while and try again. 

Nobody 1s telling you that these lithographs are of equal merit. They 
vary. He experiments and abandons. He 1s interested to drape a naked 
woman in a pose from the Medici tomb and try his hand at that. He 
illustrates a fantastic parable of H. G. Wells and his lack of trained 


[30] 


G45 HIS LITHOGRAPHS Ge 


eroticism appears in the bare bodies of “ Amour” where a little sensuous 
prettiness would have served him. His scenes in elevators and subways 
sometimes fall from satire into the purely comic and his friend John 
Sloan has certainly done better than “‘ The Street.” There is a tendency 
toward adopting Daumier’s hashed faces in the first lithographs, but 
that passes. He studies ahead. “Sixteen East Gay Street” shows his 
latter method of making crowds in New York groups of exalted marion- 
ettes whose angular motions are flatly seen. He meditates two or three 
times, visibly, on the prone musculature of a beaten prize-fighter. He 1s 
still Studying the whole problem of muscles in 1924. But I am telling 
you, as loudly as I may, that here is an authentic old billiard-player 
of our day; these nervous faces of artists are the artists of our time, not too 
comfortable in the metropolis where a comedian can do more for a 
work of art by making a joke on it from the stage than a chorus of in/ 
telligent men writing criticism can achieve. These are types of our times, 
seen — I think — not unkindly, however gaily noted. And here 1s the 
man himself, and these are his children, his comrades, his loves and his 
diversions. This is his frenzy against the war, inour times, and this is 
his comment on a “ Spiritual Potentate,” and here Georges Carpentier, 
the momentary hero of a sport, rears in a fringe of tumultuous hats and 
arms. And here another hero’s friends are black shapes of mourning 
against white exploding surf while he puts out toward an obscure judg 
ment and a hidden port.... 


Do you like all this, or any of it? He will not care. But here we are. 


Thomas Beer 


[31] 


THE lithographs and drawings of George Bellows are the glowing 
manifestations of a nature that was filled with a fierce passion for life. His 
enthusiasms were peculiarly American, and were charged with vitality, 
fresh air and frankness. To his unusual natural sifts as an artiS?, were 
added an amazing sense of cbaraéer, a unique sense of design Strength- 
ened by an inStinétive sense of geometry, and an astonishing ability to 
express his feelings in black and white. The dramatic inStant in life hada 
Strong appeal for im; yet at times, be was capable of an almost feminine 
tenderness. He had wit, and never drew or painted without it. He 
was Chea and humorous, adventurous and unafraid. He was idealistic, 
and not untouched by the romantic. Above all, he bad a heart and used 


it at all times. Eugene Speicher 


[ 33 ] 


i ~ ah ~ 
a j res 
cf. ¥ cas 


oy 


LITHOGRAPHY 


BY 
INI ts ie: KOIMOUNT UG ICMR IETS 


Reprinted by permission of D. Appleton &” Company from 
“Some Masters of Lithography” 


LITHOGRAPH, IN ITS ORDINARY FORM, 
is simply a crayon drawing on stone, done precisely in 
the manner of a crayon or a charcoal drawing on paper, 
the difference being that by means of a printing press the 
drawing on stone may be multiplied, as in etching or engraving. 

The crayon used in lithography is partly composed of soap, which 
sinks into the stone wherever it is touched by the crayon. When the 
drawing 1s finished the surface of the stone 1s covered with acid. This 
process is technically called etching, but it is not etching in the sense 
that the term is employed for the bitten line of a copperplate. The acid 
makes no incision in the stone, but 1s used for the purpose of fixing the 
drawing, or rather for rendering the parts not drawn upon less capable 
of receiving the ink in the printing. The artist will find it more adv 
vantageous to leave the etching of his stone to the ptinter, for some 
experience is required in order to obtain satisfactory results; and as the 
process is purely mechanical, the drawing itself is in no way affected by 
the acid, provided the stone is properly etched. The greatest danger lies 


in leaving the acid too long upon the stone, in which case part of the 


[35 ] 


Gems LITHOGRAPHY Gist) 


drawing itself may be eaten away. In order to print impressions, the 
Stone is moistened with water, and as water and grease do not combine, 
the parts drawn upon repel the water, while the parts not drawn upon 
absorb it. A roller charged with greasy ink is now passed over the 
surface, and for the same reason as before the ink is repelled by the wet 
parts and adheres to every part drawn upon. A sheet of paper is placed 
upon the stone, which 1s then passed through the press. The ink becomes 
transferred to the paper, and produces an exact facsimile of the original 
drawing. These are the principles upon which lithography rests, though 
there are other mechanical details connected with the printing into which 
it is unnecessary to enter, and which, like the process of etching, are 


better left to the printer. 


GEORGE-W-BELLOWS 


HUES) TOIL IE NOM GIR IA IPISISS 


ral 
J io 
. 
, 
ar 
\ 


, No 


t Study of My Mother 


2 Allan Donn Puts to Sea 


3 Nude Study,Woman Kneeling ona Pillow 


4 Marjorie, Emma and Elsie 


5s The Last Count 


6 Portrait of John Carroll 


7 Irish Town 


8 The Enemy Arrive 


9 The Street 


10 My Family, No. 2 


tr Edith Cavell 


irst State 


up, F 


12 The Hold 


Gi 
Sst 


Second State 


13 The Hold-up, 


Peictiocnterca 
ite ee ee = 


Mary 
dy of 
14 Study 


15 The Dead-line 


> Se ASMA EER 
ee sea 


sae 
ae 


16 Portrait of Elsie Speicher 


TR GRe 


17 The Return to Life 


18 Bathing-beach 


player 


19 Old Billiard: 


20 The Lovers that Passed Him By 


21 Preliminaries to the Big Bout 


pe 


AONE hiss seem ong 


22 Morning, No. 2,Nude 


23 


Morning, No. 1,Nude 


24 River-front 


25 The Last Victim 


26 Four Friends, Second State 


27 Gott Strafe 


28 The Garden of Growth 


29 Standing Nude 


30 The Charge 


Large 


ey 


31 Introducing the Champion, No. 


32 Portrait of W. E. Story, Second State 


33 Manina Silk Hat 


34 Artists’ Evening 


35 The Charge, Detail 


36 The Statuette, Nude 


37 Girl ona Flowered Cushion, Nude 


38 Prayer-meeting, No. r 


39 Prayer meeting No. 2 


40 The Barricade, No.1 


41 The Barricade, No. 2 


< 


The Christ of the Wheel 


42 


43 Sniped 


- 44 The White Hope 


45 Jeanina Black Hat, First State 


46 Caricature of Speicher, Kroll and Bellows 


Ren eninge 


PC Ra 


pe. ¥ 


My Family 


47 


48 ln the Park, First State 


49 In the Park, Second State 


50 Auntie Mason and Iler Husband 


51 Anne 


2, Small 


52 Between Rounds, No. 


53 Irish Grandmother 


54 Electrocution, Large 


53 Electrocution, Small 


56 The Sand Team 


57 Head of Anne 


58 Pool-player 


$0 Elsie, Figure 


60 The Drunk 


61 Solitude 


62 Indoor Athlete, No.1 


63 Splinter Beach 


64 The Parlor Critic 


65 Jean 


66 Nude, Woman Kneeling 


Na tage 


67 Artist Drawing 


68 The Irish Fair 


69 Counted Out, No. 2 


70 Between Rounds, No. r 


at Stag at Sharkey’s 


Central Park 


ing, 


72 Spr 


73 The LawTIs Too Slow 


74 Speicher Seated in a Chair 


75 Head of Anne 


Acaliabiutedales 


76 The Sawdust Trail 


77 Indoor Athlete,No. 2 


78 A Knock-out 


t State 


Firs 


’ 


79 Elsie Reading to Emma 


80 The Crowd 


ener eae | 


81 Nude Study, Classic on a Couch 


82 Study, Mrs. R. 


Sofa 


jorteona 


83 Emma and Mar 


84 Sixteen East Gay Street 


85 Two Girls 


86 Portrait of Robert Aitken, No.1 


87 Portrait of Robert Aitken, No. 2 


SREDISS AORN EG 


88 Seated Nude 


a 
ak hj Pg i Po ta igen 


% 


89 Dempsey and Firpo 


90 Dempsey Through the Ropes 


91 Anne 


92 Dance ina Madhouse 


age 
ica et, 


“ame 


03 Amour 


04 In an Elevator 


95 Life Study,Nude Woman Seated 


96 Emma, Elsie and Gene 


97 Crucifixion of Christ 


98 Hungry Dogs 


9090 The Shower-bath 


ER eC ioe 


rowel ate RS 


, or Lady witha Fan 


ir 


Cha 


100 Emma ina 


to1 Fantasy 


102 Lady of 1860, The Actress 


103 Tennis at Newport 


104 Wedding 


is Bouché 


Lou 


105 Portrait, 


106 Introducing John L. Sullivan 


107 Counted Out, No.1 


108 Nude Study, Woman Lying Prone 


109 Punchinello in the House of Death 


110 Prepare, Americal 


111 Billy Sunday 


112 Portrait of Mrs. Herb Roth 


Sees Coren arr a 


113 Training-quarters 


114 Arrangement, Emmaina Room 


115 The Appeal to the People 


116 Introducing Georges Carpentier 


hte ® 


we 


117 Jean, Head 


eo ES: Se Aravipre 


118 The Novitiate 


119 Man onhis Back, Nude 


120 Anneina Black Hat 


121 Matinicus 


122 Portrait of Eugene Speicher, No. 2 


123 Family 


tual Potentate 


tri 


124 Sp 


125 Business-men’s Bath 


| OSS Se = eee sts — 


126 Jean ina Black Hat, Second State 


Hye: 
vy 


127 New Society Dinner-card 


128 Business-men’s Class, ¥.M.C.A. 


B 
4 
é 
% 


I 


» No 


My Mother 


129 Study of 


130 Nude Study, Woman Lying ona Pillow 


Be 


Tene 


131 Legs of the Sea 


Story, First State 


10% 


132 PortraitofW. 


133 The Journey of Youth 


i 
43 


134 Elsie Reading to Emma, Second State 


135 Benediction in Georgia 


136 The Model, Early Study, No. 1 


ts 
ees 


Sey 


137 The Model, Early Study, No. 2 


138 Untitled 


139 Shower-bath, Detail 


140 The Case of Sergeant Delaney 


141 Miss Tate 


142 Polo Sketch 


Cre Briss Wis 


143 Nude Study, Woman Stretched on Bed 


144 Elsie, Emma and Marjorie 


oF 


x 


Base Hospital 


145 


ES 


Dineen ee ss 


at 


146 Male Torso 


147 Artists Judging Works of Art 


ese 


Geo Briteanws@ «+ 


148 Nude Study, Girl Standing on One Foot 


1409 The Return of the Useless 


150 Lychnis and Her Sons 


15t Reducing, Large 


152 Reducing, Small 


153 Portrait of Julian Bowes 


154 Sunday, Going to Church 


vening 


40 


Bed, EF 


Nudeona 


155 


156 Philosopher on the Rock 


157 Final Instructions 


158 The Jury 


1590 The Studio 


160 The Black Hat 


Seta wus; vee 


161 Love of Winter 


Gee Bellows 


162 Nude Study, Girl Standing with Hand Raised to Mouth 


163 Study, Nude Woman Standing 


164 Mother and Children 


165 Head of Gregory 


166 The Bacchanale 


Ss ne 


167 The Old Rascal 


Re Tt eet ~ a aalehalehlameailiiias 


168 Plaid Shawl 


aR oe or 
BES Ba er? 


ee 


Hes 
igek 


169 Evening Snow-storm 


Frank Byrne 


170 Sketch of 


171 Workman’s Kitchen 


172 Introducing the Champion, Small, No. 2 


a 
FOTO IPS Ae RO eS 


173 Study, Nude Woman Seated 


174 Battlefield, Detail 


R, 


175 Portrait of Mrs. 


176 Initiation in the Frat 


Portrait of Eugene Speicher, No. r 


ALLE EES YY 


178 Hail to Peace 


eerentacmys 


Married Couple 


fins 


I 


180 Girl Sewing 


way 


In the Sub 


181 


182 Anne ina Spotted Dress 


183 The Cigarette 


ing Her Hair 


PLE 


184 Girl 


185 Massacre 


a te rns RONSON 


bi. | 


186 Study of B. P. 


187 Well at Quevado 


188 Farewell to Utopia 


189 Tennis Tournament 


190 Old Irish Woman 


Rega 


191 Head of Jean 


; 
hee 


a 


SiMe Cae” 


, Wg a3 
\ ys 


192 The Battle 


193 The Life Class 


194 Self-portrait 


“gaggiostein is 
(ei 


irst State 


i 


195 Four Friends, 


La 


n 


INDEX 


Study of My Mother, No. 2, 1921. 


This Lithograph 1s of later date than the two oil portraits of 
similar composition. George Bellows’s mother was born at Sag 
Harbor, Long Island. Her father was Captain Daniel Smith, 
seaman, merchantman, whaler. Directly after her marriage 


Mrs. Bellows went west to make her home in Columbus, Ohio. 


Allan Donn Puts to Sea, 1923. 


Fifteen drawings were made by George Bellows as illustrations 
for “ The Wind Bloweth” by Donn Byrne when the book 
was published serially in the Century Magazine. This litho- 


eraph 1s from one of these drawings. 
Nude Study, Woman Kneeling on a Pillow, 1924. 


Marjorie, Emma and Elsie, 1921. 


Reading from right to left, Marjorie Henri, Emma Bellows, 
Elsie Speicher, in George Bellows’s studio, 146 East Nineteenth 
Street, New York. 


The Last Count, 1921. 


Unigue print. As far as is known there exists only one proof 


from this stone. 


Portrait of Jobn Carroll, 1923. 
[235 ] 


fi 


8 


IO 


EI 


I2 


13 


14 


TS 


G45 GEORGE:+W:BELLOWS GR 


Irish Town, 1923. 
Subject suggested by Donn Byrne’s book “‘ The Wind Bloweth.” 
The Enemy Arrive, 1918. 


One of a series of drawings made at the time of the late war. 
George Bellows was emotionally affected by the events of his 
own time. The reported brutalities of the war created in him 
an intense state of mind which expressed itself in a series of war 
lithographs, drawings and paintings. These remain as his inv 


didtment of war. 


TheStreet aoa7, 
New York. Lower East Side. 


My Family, No. 2, 1921. 


George, Emma, Anne and Jean Bellows in the Nineteenth 


Street studio. 
Edith Cavell, 1918. One of the war series. 
The Hold-up, First State, 1921. 
The Hold-up, Second State, 1921. 
Study of Mary, 1923. 
Mary McKinnon (Mrs. John De Vries). 
The Deadline, 1923. 
A tragic account of a coal-mine disaster suggested this litho- 


eraph. 
[ 236 | 


Geet INDEX Gp 


16 Portrait of Elsie Speicher, 1921. 
Wife of Eugene Speicher. 


WmleeReturn to Lifes 1923, 
Ilustrating an incident in H. G. Wells’s “Men Like Gods.” 


George Bellows made a number of drawings to accompany the 
serial publication of this book in Hearst’s International Maga- 
zine. The work greatly interested him because of the opportunity 
to use the nude in illustration, and this interest led to the series 


of lithographs. 


ee 
co 


Bathing -beach, 1921. 
A Sunday afternoon on Third Beach, Newport, Rhode Island. 


19 Old Billiard-player, 1921. 
At The Players, Gramercy Park, New York. 


20 The Lovers that Passed Him By, 1923. 
“Men Like Gods” series. 


21 Preliminaries to the Big Bout, 1916. 
For the first tame in New York prize-fight history, many fashion- 


able women appeared in the audience. 
22 Morning, No. 2, Nude, 1921. 


23 Morning, No. 1, Nude, 1921. 
[237] 


G45 GEORGE:W:-BELLOWS Gee 


24 River- front, 1924. 
East River, New York City. A favourite theme for both paint- 
ings and lithographs. 

25 The Last Victim, 1918. 


War series. 


26 Four Friends, Second State, 1921. 
Reading from left to right, Leon Kroll, George Bellows, 
Eugene Speicher and Robert Henri. 

27 Gott Strafe, 1918. 


War series. 


28 The Garden of Growth, 1923. 
“Men Like Gods”’ series. 


29 Standing Nude, 1916. 


30 The Charge, 1918. 


War series. 
31 Introducing the Champion, No. 1, Large, 1916. 


32 Portrait of W. E. Story, Second State, 1921. 


The artist’s father-in-law. Mr. Story was a New Yorker, as were 
his father and his grandfather. The latter fought in the War of 


1812. 
[238 ] 


Gee) INDEX Grp 


33 Man in a Silk Hat, 1921. 
William E. Story. 


34 Artists’ Evening, 1916. 


The scene 1s at “Petitpas,” a little French restaurant well over on 
West Twenty-ninth Street, New York. Here artists and writers 
liked to gather at the table of the old Irish portraitist, John Butler 
Yeats, father of William B. Yeats, the poet, and Jack Yeats, 
Dublin artist. Mr. Yeats, although well on in the seventies, was a 
delightful conversationalist, a wit and a great lover of beauty. 
There was always the spirit of youth about his table. 

In the picture Mr. Yeats, Robert Henri and George Bellows 


form the group in the foreground. 


aombe Charge, Detail, 1918. 


War series. 
36 The Statuette, Nude, 1917. 
37 Girlona Flowered Cushion, Nude, 1924. 


38 Prayer-meeting, No. 1, 1916. 
A testimonial in the church at Monhegan Island, Maine, 
This was Bellows’s first lithograph. 


39 Prayer-meeting, No. 2, 1916. 


40 The Barricade, No. 1, 1918. 
[239 | 


Grete GEORGE? W: BELLOW Sea 
41 The Barricade, No. 2, 1918. 


42 The Christ of the Wheel, 1923. 
“Men Like Gods ”’ series. 


43 Sniped, 1918. 


War series. 


44 TheWhite Hope, 1921. 
A prize-fight in New York. 


45 Jean ina Black Hat, First State, 1924. 
The artist’s younger daughter. 


46 Caricature of Speicher, Kroll and Bellows, 1921. 
47 My Family, No. 1, 1921. 


48 In the Park, First State, 1916. 


Early summer. Central Park. 
49 In the Park, Second State, 1916. 


50 Auntie Mason and Her Husband, 1924. 
The daguerreotype period. 


51 Anne, 1924. 
The artist’s older daughter. 


52 Between Rounds, No. 2, Small, 1923. 
[240] 


53 
ot 


55 


$6 


57 


58 
$9 
60 


61 


62 


63 


64 


Gee INDEK Gre 
Irish Grandmother, 1923. 
Electrocution, Large, 1917. 
Electrocution, Small, 1917. 


The Sand Team, 1919. 


The original oil painting, bearing the same title, is owned by 


the Brooklyn Museum. 


Head of Anne, 1921. 


Anne Bellows. 
Pool-player, 1921. 
item igure, 1921. 
The Drunk, 1924. 


Solitude, 1917. 


Central Park on a summer night. 
Indoor Athlete, No. 1, 1921. 


Splinter Beach, 1916. 
East River, New York. 


The Parlor Critic, 1921. 
Relaxation of a professional critic. 


[241 ] 


Gwe) GE) ORs Gr Ee Wile Ee eel Oey SS aenc ee 


65 Jean, 1923. 


Jean Bellows. 
66 Nude, Woman Kneeling, 1916. 


67 Artist Drawing, 1924. 
Eugene Speicher. 


68 The Irish Fair, 1923. 
“The Wind Bloweth ” sertes. 


69 Counted Out, No. 2, 1921. 


70 Between Rounds, No.1, Large, 1916. 
In a New York ring. 


71 Stag at Sharkey’s, 1917. 
The “Stag at Sharkey’s” was the first lithograph to attraét 
general public attention. Many of the early pictures of prize- 


fights were impressions of nights at this “ Glub.3 
72 Spring, Central Park, 1921. 


73 The Law Is Too Slow, 1923. 


An illustration for a tragic story. The reproduction was pub- 
lished in the Century Magazine. 


74 Speicher Seated in a Chair, 1924. 
peel 


Ge) INDEX Gres 
75 Head of Anne, 1922. 
76 The Sawdust Trail, 1917. 


This lithograph was made after a visit to Philadelphia with 
John Reed representing the Metropolitan Magazine. Billy Sun- 
day shakes a convert’s hand, back of him sands Ma Sunday 
and next to her Mr. Rodeheaver dire@s the vast volunteer 


choir in the background. 
77 Indoor Athlete, No. 2, AO GPIE + 


78 A Knock out, 1921. 


The idea for this lithograph was based on a much valued draw 
ing done many years before. Very few prints of this stone were 


made. 
79 Elsie Reading to Emma, First State, 1921. 


80 The Crowd, 1923. 
“Men Like Gods” series. 


81 Nude Study, Classic on a Couch, 1924. 


82 Study, Mrs. R., 1923. 
Study for a portrait. Mrs. Walter Richter. 


83 Emma and Marjorie ona Sofa, 1921, 
The artist’s wife and Marjorie Organ (Mrs. Robert Henri). 


84 Sixteen East Gay Street, 1924. 
Sketched on a visit to his old home, Columbus, Ohio. 


[243 | 


ces CEO R Gbew BE CaO ee) 


85 Two Girls, 1917. 
Composition of nudes. 

86 Portrait of Robert Aitken, No. 1, 1921. 
Robert Aitken, the sculptor, did a portrait bust of George 
Bellows in 1908. 

87 Portrait of Robert Aitken, No. 2, 1921. 

88 Seated Nude, 1921. 


89 Dempsey and Firpo, 1924. 
A drawing was made of this contest for the New York Journal. 
The lithograph was a subsequent treatment of the famous bout. 
Bellows described this fight as the most exciting and dramatic 


of all his experience. 

90 Dempsey Through the Ropes, 1924. 
Another treatment of the Dempsey-Firpo championship fight 
held at night, Polo Grounds, New York. 

oI Anne, 1923. 


Anne Bellows. 


92 Dance ina Madhouse, 1917. 


Insanevasylum, Columbus, Ohio. 


93 Amour, 1923. 
“Men Like Gods”’ series. 
[244] 


GS INDEX 6x5 
94 In an Elevator, 1916. 
95 Life Study, Nude Woman Seated, 1G ty 


96 Emma, Elsie and Gene, 1921. 
In the studio. 


97 Crucifixion of Christ, 1923. 
This subject was dealt with in three mediums: first a drawing, 
then this lithograph, and finally the large oil painting. 

98 Hungry Dogs, 1916. 
Late at night in the West Fifties, New York. 


99 The Shower-bath, 1917. 
At the Y.M.C.A., Fifty-seventh Street, New York City. 


100 Emma in a Chair, or Lady with a Fan, 1921. 


The artist’s wife. 
101 Fantasy, 1916. 
102 Lady of 1860, The Actress, 1924. 


103 Tennis at Newport, 1920. 
The annual Tennis Tournament at the Newport Casino. 
Tilden and Johnston were the outstanding players. No attempt 
at portraiture was made, the interest being rather in the setting 


and the spirit of the event. 


[245 ] 


Gets GEORGE: W:BELLOWS Gi) 
104 Wedding, 1924. 
105 Portrait, Louis Bouché. 
106 Introducing John L. Sullivan, 1916. 
107 Counted Out, No. 1, 1921. 
108 Nude Study, Woman Lying Prone, 1924. 


109 Punchinello in the House of Death, 1923. 
“The Wind Bloweth ” series. 


110 Prepare, America! 1916. 


Satire. Our first approach to the war. 
111 Billy Sunday, 1923. 
112 Portrait of Mrs. Herb Roth, 1924. 


113 Training-quarters, 1916. 


Willard, the champion, in training. New York City. 


114 Arrangement, Emma ina Room, 1921. 
The artist’s wife. 


115 The Appeal to the People, 1924. 


116 Introducing Georges Carpentier, 1921. 
Mr. Herbert Bayard Swope, executive editor of the New York 
World, commissioned the artist to make a drawing, for publi- 
- cation, of this international championship fight. The lithograph 


resulted from this material. 


lata 6: | 


Ghee I NDE XK Gx85 


117 Jean, Head, 1921. 


Jean Bellows. 


118 The Novitiate, 1916. 
Observed on a New York Street. 


119 Man on bis Back, Nude. 
An early lithograph made by transferring the drawing to the 


stone. This method of transference was used only in the artist’s 
earliest essays. All subsequent works were drawn direétly on the 


stone. 


120 Anne in a Black Hat, 1924. 


Anne Bellows. 


121 Matinicus, 1916. 


An island with a large fish-wharf, off the coast of Maine. Very 
beautiful and seldom visited by artists. 


122 Portrait of Eugene Speicher, No. 2, 1924. 
123 Family, 1916. 


124 Spiritual Potentate, 1923. 


A satire. 


125 Business-men’s Bath, 1923. 
Y.M.C.A. swimming-pool. 
[247 | 


Gets GEORGE: W:BELLOWS G45 
126 Jean ina Black Hat, Second State, 1924. 


127 New Society Dinner-card, 1923. 


The annual dinner of the “New Society of Artists” held at 
the Anderson Gallery, Park Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street, 
New York. George Bellows was one of the founders of this 


society. 


128 Business-men’s Class, Y.M.C.A., 1916. 


Memories of early student days when Bellows frequented the 
Y.M.C.A. for exercise and relaxation. It was here that he and 


Eugene Speicher first met. 
129 Study of My Mother, No. 1, 1921. 
130 Nude Study, Woman Lying on a Pillow, 1924. 


131. Legsofitversed,ag2t 
Third Beach, Newport, Rhode Island. 


1320 Orerate of WE Story, Firsts tatemtoar, 


133 The Journey of Youth, 1923. 
“ The Wind Bloweth ” series. 


134 Elsie Reading to Emma, Second State, 1921. 
135 Benediction in Georgia, 1916. 


136 The Model, Early Study, No. 1, 1917. 
[248 | 


137 


138 


139 


140 


I41 


142 


143 


144 


145 


146 


147 


Gk) INDEX GR 


The Model, Early Study, No. 2, 1917. 
Untitled, 1918. 


War series. 
Shower-bath, Detail, 1916. 


The Case of Sergeant Delaney, 1918. 
After an illustration which appeared in the Century Magazine. 


Miss Tate, 1924. 
Polo Sketch, 1921. 


Composed from sketches made several years before at the Gould 
estate, Lakewood, New Jersey. It is to Joseph B. Thomas we 


owe a vote of thanks for arranging this visit. 
Nude Study, Woman Stretched on Bed, 1924. 


Elsie, Emma and Marjorie, 1921. 
A variation of No. 4. 


Base Hospital, 1918. 


War series. 


Male Torso, 1916. 
An early drawing transferred to the lithograph stone. 


Artists Judging Works of Art, 1916. 
A satire. The result of having served on a jury. Many well- 
known artists may be distinguished in good-natured carica’ 


ture. To the extreme right 1s George Bellows himself: 


[249 ] 


Cre) GEORGE:W:BELLOW S Gr#*5 
148 Nude Study, Girl Standing on One Foot, 1924. 
149 The Return of the Useless, 1918. 
War series. 
150 Lychnis and Her Sons, 1923. 
“Men Like Gods”’ series. 
151 Reducing, Large, 1916. 
152 Reducing, Small, 1921. 
153 Portrait of Julian Bowes, 1923. 


154 Sunday, Going to Church, 1921. 


Memories of a Sunday morning in Columbus, Ohio, 1897. 
George, aged fifteen, 1s uncomfortably seated next to his father, 
who is driving. His mother is on the gear seat; two friends are 


being given a lift. 
155 Nude on a Bed, Evening, 1921. 


156 Philosopher on the Rock, 1916. 


Summer 1n Central Park. 


157 Final Instructions, 1923. 
“Men Like Gods” series. 


158 The Jury, 1916. 
EeSatires 


[250] 


1§9 


160 


161 


162 


163 


164 


165 


166 


167 


168 


Gee INDE XK Gi 


The Studio, 1916. 
George Bellows’s studio, 146 East Nineteenth Street, New York. 
His first Christmas-card. 


The Black Hat, 1921. 
Emma S. Bellows. The artist’s wife. 


Love of Winter, 1923. 


The second Christmas-card. The original painting from which 
this lithograph was made 1s owned by the Chicago Art Institute. 


Nude Study, Girl Standing with Hand Raised to Mouth, 
1924. 
Study, Nude Woman Standing, 1916. 
Mother and Children, 1916. 

The artist’s wife and two children at Ogunquit, Maine. 
Head of Gregory, 1924. 

A portrait. Gregory Allen Slader. 
The Bacchanale, 1918. 


War series. 
The Old Rascal, 1916. 


Plaid Shawl, 1923. 
The artist’s wife. 
[251] 


ates GEORGE:W:-BELLOWS Gh) 


169 Evening Snow-storm, 1921. 


New Year’s Eve. Columbus Circle, Fifty-ninth Street, New 
York. An oil painting of this same subject was destroyed by the 
artist. Afterwards he regretted having done this and drew the 
lithograph. 


170 Sketch of Frank Byrne, 1923. 

171 Workman’s Kitchen, 1917. 

172 Introducing the Champion, Small, No. 2, 1921. 
173 Study, Nude Woman Seated, 1916. 


174 Battlefield, Detail, 1918. 


War series. 
175 Portrait of Mrs. R., 1923. 
Mee Walter Richter. 
176 Initiation in the Frat, 1917. 
177 Portrait of Eugene Speicher, No. 1, 1924. 


178 Hail to Peace, 1919. 
The third Christmas-card. After a large picture painted for the 


Red Cross to commemorate the ending of the war. 


179 Married Couple, 1923. 
Aesatite: 


[252 | 


Ge) INDEX Gir 


180 Girl Sewing, 1923. 
The artist’s wife. 


181 In the Subway, 1921. 
New York. 


182 Anne ina Spotted Dress, 1921. 


The first lithograph portrait of Anne Bellows. 


183 The Cigarette, 1918. 
War series. 

184 Girl Fixing Her Hair, 1924. 
The artist’s wife. 


185 Massacre, 1918. 


Waar series. 


186 Study of B.P., 1924. 


Brock Pemberton. 


187 Well at Quevado, 1921. 
Seen while motoring from California to New Mexico with 
George Washington Smith, the architeét. Bellows tried this 
composition in three mediums, oil, water-colour and lithography. 


The lithograph did not satisfy him, so very few prints were pulled. 


188 Farewell to Utopia, 1923. 
“Men Like Gods”’ series. 


[253 ] 


G4) GEORGE:W:BELLOWS GH 


189 Tennis Tournament, 1920. 


Newport, Rhode Island. 
190 Old Irish Woman, 1924. 


191 Head of Jean, 1921. 
The artist’s daughter. 


192 The Battle, 1924. 
*“Men Like Gods” series. 


193 The Life Class, 1917. 
The Henri night class in the old school at the north-east corner 
of Fifty-seventh Street and Sixth Avenue, New York. 


194 Self-portrait, 1921. 


19§ Four Friends, First State, 1921. 


Kroll, Bellows, Speicher and Henri in the studio of Robert 
Henri, 10 Gramercy Park, New York City. 


[254] 


This book has been set in monotype Polipbilus 
roman and Blado italic; electrotyped, printed and 
bound by the Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass. 
The illustration plates have been made by the 
Beck Engraving Co. - Paper furnished by Louis 
Dejonge @7 Co. + Title page designed by 
Elmer Adler 


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